Been doing little bit of planning in regards of rules and judging arrangement.

JudgingI am considering having only 3 judges and also community vote. We will be dropping presentation and technical score, and only have one score. Each game will therefor receive one score and one review from each of the judge.

The judging panel will represent 50% of the final score and the community voting the other 50%.

I am considering having only 3 judges and also community vote. We will be dropping presentation and technical score, and only have one score. Each game will therefor receive one score and one review from each of the judge.

The judging panel will represent 50% of the final score and the community voting the other 50%.

Cool, but just to clarify: if only 1 judge votes on a game does that judge's score count as the full 50% or only 16.6%? Also, will the community vote be weighted in some way? Would 1 vote of 10/10 worth more than (say) 1000 votes of 9/10?

Cool, but just to clarify: if only 1 judge votes on a game does that judge's score count as the full 50% or only 16.6%? Also, will the community vote be weighted in some way? Would 1 vote of 10/10 worth more than (say) 1000 votes of 9/10?

I'll make sure to play and review everyone's game, no matter what. I imagine Appel will increase the deadline if any of the judges need it in order to get all their reviews in. But if there are indeed tons of games and we can't extend the deadline, I'll just end up putting shorter reviews for all of them so that I can review all of them. Don't want anyone to be left out.

Reviews can be written any time over the submission period, and that's where the main workload is. I'm not too worried about it now, since we already have a judging system in place.

Scoring is a different beast, that needs to be done after the contest closes, because we need to have all the games in before we can start comparing them in a relative fashion (this one is better than that one, etc.).

Applets only (required), webstart optional (applets can be launched as Webstart).

Not sure that's a great idea. Webstart support for applets is still immature. In particular, it sizes incorrectly, and so stuff on the bottom isn't shown. This makes e.g. Keggle from 2009 not really work properly.

Not sure that's a great idea. Webstart support for applets is still immature. In particular, it sizes incorrectly, and so stuff on the bottom isn't shown. This makes e.g. Keggle from 2009 not really work properly.

I don't see a problem really. Applets will be required, if devs really want webstart it's up to them to make it work properly, but that doesn't exclude them from doing Applet (Kafkish approach here).

I do like Markus's idea of just skipping webstart altogether. But I know there there are some devs resistant to the idea, so the optional-webstart is made available to them.

If people agree that we don't really need the Webstart-option, then we don't need it.

I don't see a problem really. Applets will be required, if devs really want webstart it's up to them to make it work properly

So basically we're hoping that someone from Sun enters? No-one is going to want to waste their precious 4k on finding their parent window, getting its insets, and setting its size to WIDTH+horizontal insets, HEIGHT+vertical insets.

What happens if one judge can't run a game? Will they give 0/10, or will their score be skipped?

I think the changes sound good. I mean, I'll definitely miss presentation and technical, but they add a lot of reviewing work and I can see why we're skipping them. Applets only is a good move, if you ask me.

Initially i was a little apprehensive about forcing applets as i did not want to run foul of applet security due to the fact that i embed binary data as an attribute in the class file of my game. I have just done a test and it seems to be fine so i am happy enough.

Concerning Webstart, I experimented a lot of problems with it - for example I was unable to launch my own 2009 entry on my computer through it... So I don't mind if we must submit applets for the next contest.

And to answer you about your test applet, moogie, it works rather fine on my computer... However all is not perfect, because your game starts sometimes with some lag. But it stops if I move the ship at least a few seconds. My computer runs under Vista 32 bits SP 2, with Java 6 Update 16.

***Message update***Moogie, actually the lag on your test applet disappears once the game screen is activated, I mean once one has clicked on it... So I suppose you don't have to worry about it !

It's been quite a few years since i last entered 4k so am rather rusty. However I have an idea, and lots of spare leave in December, due to it being a hectic year at work. There's always a silver lining.

Back in the dim mists of time, webstart with JFrame and everything in the constructor was pretty much the smallest template. Using an applet means we have start(), stop() and init() and I usually create a new thread to run my game in. Rather more bloat than I want for 4k! Can I stuff the entire game loop in init() and not return until game over? Any good examples of minimal applet code I should look at?

I notice people are saying applets are now better than webstart. Obviously there's been a change of heart over the last few years. Is this an issue with webstart user experience (nasty warning dialog boxes) or is there a programming related improvement on applets?

Incidentally, looking at previous posts, I've always had trouble with window sizing when writing 4k games using just a JFrame, due to decoration sizes. Also pack() and setsize() and windows visibility don't always play nice.

Back in the dim mists of time, webstart with JFrame and everything in the constructor was pretty much the smallest template. Using an applet means we have start(), stop() and init() and I usually create a new thread to run my game in. Rather more bloat than I want for 4k! Can I stuff the entire game loop in init() and not return until game over? Any good examples of minimal applet code I should look at?

IMO applets probably end up to be overall smaller than using a JFrame, since you don't have to have a main(String[] args) method or setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE), you only extend the methods that are needed. There probably is a way to just use one method for an applet game loop instead of two as in your example.

I notice people are saying applets are now better than webstart. Obviously there's been a change of heart over the last few years. Is this an issue with webstart user experience (nasty warning dialog boxes) or is there a programming related improvement on applets?

Applets have been hated for years due to the horrid user experience, but the recent changes (java 1.6.0_10+) have made them pretty nice, almost flash like due to fast startup and the tons of bug fixes (especially the browser locking and crashing ones). IMO they are now better than JWS due to being able to provide jvm parameters and run in a separate jvm without the unfamiliar external windows. Also imagine playing a 100 jws games, thats a 100 extra entries in your add/remove programs list . Plus applets IMO make the competition more accessible to players.

Back in the dim mists of time, webstart with JFrame and everything in the constructor was pretty much the smallest template. Using an applet means we have start(), stop() and init() and I usually create a new thread to run my game in. Rather more bloat than I want for 4k! Can I stuff the entire game loop in init() and not return until game over? Any good examples of minimal applet code I should look at?

My applets have always ended up smaller than my stand-alone 4k games. You get a free component to paint on just by inheriting from Applet, no need to create it or set up any size or even make it visible.You can check the source code for Left 4k Dead if you wish: http://www.mojang.com/notch/j4k/l4kd/G.java

I wouldn't recommend running much logic in start() or init() as those are supposed to return as fast as possible, so you pretty much HAVE to create a Thread. I do this in start() instead of init() to be able to rely on isActive(). This means that the game could in theory stop and restart when someone opens another tab in some obscure browser or something, but in reality I've never seen it. (and it's not a HUGE problem anyway imo, people tend to stay on the game page)

I wouldn't recommend running much logic in start() or init() as those are supposed to return as fast as possible, so you pretty much HAVE to create a Thread.

I think this was part of the problem I and some other applet users had last year. With the latest Java release available at the start of the competition you could get away with just having a loop in init(), but the version released near the end of the competition seemed to require init() to finish before doing something important (at a guess, creating the native peer).

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